deathly hallows.

i promised myself that i wouldn't write more than once a day, because as any teenager knows, when the lectures start coming fast and furious 'round age 16 or so, tuning out is made all the easier.

however - the global impact of the revelation of harry potter's final artistic incarnation has prompted me to write a bit about something that is very near and dear to my heart. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the role of fantasy in the modern world.

if you look at the general trends of astronomically successful and popular fantasy paradigms, you realize one thing very quickly: they were all born out of war, and darkness, and death. lord of the rings was penned in the midst of the second world war. the world of narnia sprung out of the war's immediate aftermath. and now we have harry potter, a series which admittedly began before our current war [ or series of military and civilian deaths; a rose is a rose... ], but which also pointedly has grown darker and more menacing as time passes. the absolutely mind-blowing sales and publishing records, to me at least, point out the inherently human desire to escape into a realm free of scientific restraints, with chinese fireball dragons or unicorns.

people mock escapism and call it childish, or even worse, cowardly. how can it be so when it seems to impart at least a little hope? and furthermore, if these "avenues of escapism" are so problematic, then severe scrutiny needs to be leveled at religion as a whole.

you can't escape escapism. except maybe through a portkey - and even then, you can't escape the irony.

[ by the way, that image is copyrighted to scholastic, inc. please don't cause me any legal trouble or force me to use my pathetic 1L skills to defend myself from a lawsuit. ]